Dan Harrison

IN THE foyer of Zhabei Middle School No. 8 in northern Shanghai, a simple plaque states the school's mission. Roughly translated, it says: :We believe that every student has the desire to succeed. We believe that every student has the potential to succeed. We believe that every student can gain success in many fields."

Few teachers anywhere would argue with the motto, but few have been as successful as the teachers here in translating these noble sentiments into reality. This school, in a battling neighbourhood with above average crime rates, was once among the poorest performers in its area. But last year, 83 per cent of its graduate class went on to university, compared with a municipal average of 56 per cent.

This school is not an anomaly in sprawling Shanghai, China's largest city, which has a population comparable to that of the entire Australian continent. It was put on the global education map in December 2010 when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released the results of its Program for International Student Assessment.

The PISA tests, which span reading, maths and science, are taken by 15-year-olds every three years and are closely watched by policymakers worldwide as the most respected measure of how well their education systems are performing compared with their global peers. The tests were first held in 2001, but the most recent round was the first time mainland China had taken part. On their debut performance, Shanghai students blitzed counterparts in 64 other nations and economies, topping global tables in each of the three subjects.

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Speaking at a technical school on the day the results were released, US President Barack Obama compared the occasion with the moment in 1957 when the Soviet Union drew ahead of the US in the space race by launching a satellite known as Sputnik.

“Fifty years later, our generation's Sputnik moment is back,” the President said. “As it stands right now, America is in danger of falling behind.” His Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, added: “We can quibble, or we can face the brutal truth that we're being out-educated.”

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The results were also a wake-up call for Australia. As if it wasn't worrying enough that in mathematics the average 15-year-old in Shanghai was the equivalent of two years ahead of their Australian counterpart, Australia's performance in maths and reading had fallen compared with the previous PISA tests in 2006. Australia was one of only five countries, and the only high-performing nation, to record a decline.

Reflecting on the results recently, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Australia was in danger of losing "the education race" to its regional neighbours, four of which – Shanghai, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore – make up — with Finland — the top five systems in the PISA tests.

The shock with which Shanghai's results were greeted in the West was soon replaced by scepticism about the integrity of the testing program and stereotyping the role of Eastern culture.

Indeed, Asian-American law professor Amy Chua set newspaper letter pages ablaze with her memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, in which she suggests Western parents may be too nurturing and permissive, and perhaps could learn something from stricter Asian parents.

Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the OECD's testing program, defends its rigour. The OECD selects the samples and supervises the administration of the tests, and the results of those tests that do not satisfy its strict protocols are not published.

He also plays down the role of culture, noting that while four of the top five systems benefit from the Confucian reverence for education, other Asian systems, such as those in Macau and Taiwan, deliver only middling outcomes. He says Shanghai's results disprove the widely held notion that Asian education systems are based on rote learning.

"PISA provides a balanced set of tasks. There are some that you can solve simply by reproducing subject matter content ... but most of the tasks require you to actually extrapolate from what you know, to apply your knowledge. You can do reasonably well just by getting the content right, but you can't do very well on PISA without demonstrating those higher order thinking skills."

Schleicher attributes Shanghai's success to its capacity to attract the most talented teachers and principals into the most disadvantaged schools. Taking on difficult assignments is a requirement for career progression, and prestige is attached to working in challenging classrooms.

“In many of our countries, people would say, 'Well, I'm not going to go to that school, that will be a downgrading of my career',” Schleicher, who is German, says. “Whereas there it's really part of your opportunity to demonstrate that you're a great principal or a great teacher."

While equity – the degree of influence socioeconomic background has on results – is a weak point for Australia, it is a strength for Shanghai, which has among the smallest level of variation in results between schools. Of Shanghai's disadvantaged students, 70 per cent are classified as "resilient", meaning their skills are stronger than their background would predict. The bottom 10 per cent of students in Shanghai are the equivalent of 13 months ahead of the bottom 10 per cent of Australian students.

“In Australia you find lots of schools that do as well as schools in Shanghai, but you find also schools at the other end of the spectrum and those schools don't exist in Shanghai now.”

Schleicher attributes this to the absence of grade repetition, a culture of home-room teachers teaching the same students from year to year, and the high level of responsibility Chinese teachers assume for their students, which goes far beyond the classroom.

"If students get in trouble, the police call the teacher, not just the parents." He says all of these factors lead to a sense that teachers must remedy their student's underperformance because handing them on to a colleague is not an option.

Sharing the secrets of Shanghai's success with visiting officials and journalists has become a big part of the job of Yin Houqing, the deputy director-general of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. Speaking at the commission's offices in the heart of the city, he says the results were pleasing but not a surprise.

“All the people in the world know Chinese students can do exams well, but now through the PISA tests we know that [they] also know how to apply this knowledge.”

He says the performance of Shanghai schools was the dividend for two decades of education reform, including a modernisation of the curriculum and relentless efforts to lift teaching quality.

Research is also a focus for developing ways to improve the system. The commission has 80 top teachers developing new teaching models. Each of the city's 18 districts has its own office of teaching and research, and most schools have a research group. Peer-reviewed research is a prerequisite for Shanghai teachers seeking promotion.

He acknowledges that the devotion of Chinese parents to their children's education contributes to student success, but says authorities are trying to reduce pressure on students by encouraging parents to give their children more space. “It is definitely a double-edged sword,” he says.

The commission has introduced limits on how much homework teachers can set, but they have proved difficult to manage.

Yin says the government monitors its schools closely and steps in to resolve problems, such as by replacing principals or appointing high-performing teachers to help manage particular schools.

In 2005, the commission appointed the principal of Zhabei's Middle School No. 8, Liu Jinghai, to help turn around 10 other low-performing schools in the city. Teachers from Liu's school work with those of partner schools.

Liu uses a strategy he calls "success education", which involves instilling academic confidence in low performing pupils by focusing on their other strengths.

“In our school some students are not academically successful but maybe they are good at singing or painting or martial arts,” he says. “They do have a specialty, so we look into more aspects of them to try to find the strong points in them.”

He applies the same philosophy to his teachers. Staff members share their experiences and teachers are encouraged to emulate the approaches of their most effective colleagues. Some staff have resisted this approach, but he argues if Chinese factories can improve their efficiency by importing American manufacturing processes, the same must be possible in education.

“We have a lot of KFC and McDonald's here,” Liu says. “We don't see any American supervisors or staff, but they have the same quality in China as in America.”

Ben Jensen, director of the education program at the Grattan Institute, a Melbourne-based think tank, travelled to Shanghai, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong last year to investigate what Australia could learn from them.

In a report released today, he says the conditions in these places cannot be reproduced here, but he nonetheless applauds each place for its focus on building a culture of teacher collaboration through classroom observation, mentoring and modelling good teaching. He says Shanghai has accepted larger class sizes as a trade-off to give teachers more time out of the classroom to conduct research and improve their teaching.

Shanghai's average class size of 40 is low by Chinese standards (the national average is 50 and some are as large as 100) but is significantly higher than the Australian average of 24. "They say what's important, what really matters is the quality of teaching and learning in classrooms. Therefore they have teachers teaching for less time each week.

"Teachers have more time to prepare, more time to diagnose student needs, more time for active collaboration, for feedback, for observation and for research in schools," Jensen says.

“A school principal in Shanghai said to me, 'From what I've seen of the West, a teacher's workspace is their classroom. In Shanghai, in my school, the teacher's workspace is their office. That's where they do their research, that's where they become better teachers'.”

In Shanghai all teachers have mentors, including two in their school (one for advice on subjects, the other for classroom management) as well as others at district level. Mid-level teachers observe at least one lesson a week. Rather than being promoted out of the classroom, outstanding teachers are promoted into more classrooms through being given additional mentoring responsibilities.

Jensen says while politicians and policymakers everywhere agree on the importance of teacher quality, Shanghai has succeeded in introducing strategies that make a daily difference in schools.

In Australia, he says, there is a "large disconnect" between the good intentions and the classroom.

Federal School Education Minister Peter Garrett says the government is aware of the achievement gaps emerging between Australian students and their counterparts in places like Shanghai. “It's absolutely critical that we reverse this trend,” he says.

“We are especially focused on what this means for our students in a century when the economies in east Asia are booming and greater attention is being given to education.”

Garrett says part of the government's response to the challenge will be its looming shake-up of school funding.

Jensen says the decline in performance in many Australian schools — despite increased funding — proves money is not the answer.